Do you want a gorgeous, jaw-dropping look without spending a lot? Decorate with paper flowers! I can teach you how to make giant paper flowers that will brighten up any room or event. They are perfect for craft room walls, nurseries, little kids rooms, and photo backdrops at weddings and parties.
I adore flowers of all kinds. They are so bright and cheerful, and they look good with ANYTHING. But I live in the frozen tundra of Michigan where we don’t get real flowers growing for at least six months out of every year. So what’s a girl to do? Make flowers! More specifically, I make giant paper flowers!
Last June I made a giant paper flower — a spellbound rose — and I shared it here on the blog. It’s become one of your favorite all-time tutorials.
I then showed you how to make three more giant paper flowers: a sunflower, a peony, and a hellebore (winter rose).
These DIY giant paper flowers are exquisite, but not always the easiest or fastest projects to make. The peony in particular is quite intricate!
So I’ve been thinking … I need to design a simple yet dramatic paper flower that you can make quickly. A design that is easy enough to make dozens of to decorate a wall or hang on a backdrop. You can make a giant paper flower about 10″ wide in just 15 minutes. Want it bigger? No problem — just cut eight more petals a little larger (one to a sheet of paper) and you can make a 14-16″ paper flower with just a few more minutes of effort.
We used these easy giant paper flowers to make this stunning paper flower backdrop:
After much trial and testing, I present my easy giant paper flower pattern and tutorial! Unlike my other giant paper flowers, this pattern is not any specific type of flower, but just a pretty, cheerful blossom to brighten your room!
Reader Sandy McFarland made these beauties from my pattern — she says, “Easy is an understatement! I upsized these to use 12×12 sheets and cut with a Silhouette.”
And these pretty in pink flowers were made by reader Sue Zakar for her granddaughter. She made the stems from 16″ bamboo skewers covered in green duct tape and added some leaves and a stamen. Aren’t they cute?
So without further ado, let me show you how to make giant paper flowers! This post contains some affiliate links for your convenience (which means if you make a purchase after clicking a link I will earn a small commission but it won’t cost you a penny more)! Read my full disclosure policy.
Materials Needed to Make the Giant Paper Flowers
- 65lb. cardstock (seven sheets of any color you want)
- Hot glue gun
- A smooth dowel or something to roll the edges of your petals
- A way to cut your paper (you can use scissors, but it’s much faster to use a Cricut)
- Design #93 – My free pattern or SVG cut file (available in my free resource library—get the password at the bottom of this post)
How to Make Giant Paper Flowers
First, download Design #93 which is the pattern or cut file for this easy paper flower from my free resource library. It’s available as both a PDF (for hand cutting) and an SVG/DXF (for machine cutting). If you’re going to cut it out on your cutting machine, upload the file to your design software. If you’re not sure how to upload an SVG cut file to Cricut Design Space, watch this helpful video training series I made.
Tip: I also re-created this flower inside Cricut Design Space so there’s nothing to upload — get the free project link in my library, too!
Here is my giant paper flower design file uploaded to Cricut Design Space. Don’t worry about how they look here — all the petals are in there. They will all cut out properly when you click the Make It button.
Tip: If you’re not sure how to upload an SVG cut file to Cricut Design Space, watch this helpful video training series I made. If you’re on an iPhone or iPad, here’s how to download and upload SVG files to the Cricut Design Space app.
Cut out your flower petals from your cardstock. Use scissors and the PDF pattern…
Or use a cutting machine and the SVG cut file (this is the fastest way, I think!)
Here are all the pieces cut out and ready to go.
Begin with the largest four-petal group and place a line of glue along the base of the petal that is connected to the square in the middle, just as shown below.
Move the paper on the opposite side (the side that doesn’t have glue) so it’s on top of the glued side. Do this for all four petals. This will give your petals a cup shape and helps give your giant paper flower a three-dimensional look.
Repeat for the other two groups of four-petal pieces.curl the edges of each one in or out as you wish. Use the dowel, a pen, or something long and cylindrical to curl the edges. In my example, I curled the large petals outward and the smaller petals inward.
Repeat for the other two groups of four-petal pieces.
Now glue all of these petal groups together, largest to smallest, taking care to offset the petals and fill in the gaps with each layer.
Now you need to take the four individual petals and glue, cup, and curl them.
Glue each petal into the center of your flower, overlapping and rotating each one 90° as you go. Take care not to let any glue show.
You could stop here, but this flower looks a little small and not quite full enough. Plus we have eight more large petals still!
Take a large petal and place a thin line of hot glue along the cut line at the base .
Move the paper on the opposite side (the side that doesn’t have glue) so it’s on top of the glued side.
Curl the edge of the large petal outward.
Put glue at the very base of the petal.
Take your assembled flower, turn it over so you can see the base, and begin attaching the petals to the bottom.
Continuing gluing the large petals in place at 90º — make sure your petals fill in spots in between the petals already in place.
Here is a pink 10″ giant paper flower made with just seven sheets of paper!
If you want it larger, cut out eight more of the largest petal, but make them about 20-30%% larger — you’ll only be able to fit one to a sheet of cardstock. Glue, cup, and curl them just as shown above. Glue them to the base of your flower to create a larger paper flower!
Get my free pattern and cut files to Make Giant Paper Flowers
If you make these giant paper flowers, please share a photo in my amazing Cricut Facebook group or tag me on social media with #jennifermaker.
Wow! These look fantastic…and so easy!Thank you…can’t wait to make some for my w all. ๐
Mee tooo… wanna give it a try for sure! Thank you!
Thank you for all you do, Jennifer. I encourage everyone to visit your blog!
excellent, DIY for my daughters 7th birthday. Thank you
awesome looking forward to trying
Thank you very much for this information on the flower. I have added a middle part on mine.
Love these. I have made several of the large paper flowers today. I can successfully do paper products, really struggling with vinyl but I wil get there. Is there a way to make these roses at a smaller size just so I can use them to fill in on my wall decoration I am doing with the large flower arrangements? Thank you so much for sharing these with such amazing step by step directions.
You can resize the flowers to your liking! Also, have you checked out the variety of flowers you can make from this post: https://jennifermaker.com/paper-flower-designs-cut-above-students/
how can i get the svg to make this flower
We are always happy to help, Marlene! You can usually find those instructions in blog post itself, just as a hint. ๐ Go to our free Resource Library and search for Design #93, which contains all of the files for this great paper flower!! ๐